Costanilla de San Vicente

A costanilla is that word only Madrid uses precisely: a short slope, too steep to go unnoticed and too short to boast about. Costanilla de San Vicente drops from calle de San Vicente Ferrer to calle de la Palma, in the Universidad quarter. Around 1710 the street was listed as calle de San Gregorio. The change came in 1835: there were two other San Gregorio streets in the city, and 19th-century naming settled such clashes with the nearest devotional reference. So Saint Vincent Ferrer entered — though the sources already stumbled over two saints of the same name, the Zaragoza martyr and the Valencian preacher, without settling which one inspired it. Capmany recounted that a long slope once started nearby, running down to the Matalobos stream, a lonely spot whose bad name came from the wolves it bred. The 18th century tamed the open ground into a quarter of artisans and working women.